


Two (by Sleeping at Last)

by AlmondBlossomsTC



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, This is. Saccharine. It’s obnoxious, will I ever edit anything I write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 05:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlmondBlossomsTC/pseuds/AlmondBlossomsTC
Summary: As a nurse and a police officer, Takaaki and Hiroko both work long shifts and their time off doesn’t always overlap





	Two (by Sleeping at Last)

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW THIS IS TROPEY SHUT UUUP  
I feel like the pacing is also mad weird and I think I switched tenses a bit but whatever

‘Clean mirror’

  
The first time Hiroko saw one, she wasn’t sure if it was a reminder that Takaaki wrote to himself as he was leaving for work or a request. Probably the former, since the note was written on one of his little tickets from work and left in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She was only raiding it for Tylenol - she had a splitting headache after getting home from her call shift.

  
The mirror was dirty. She took the few minutes necessary to windex it and give it a scrub before going down for a nap. Cheekily, she left Takaaki’s note in the open on the sink, with a checkmark scratched onto it.

  
He brought it to her in the bedroom that night and gave her a kiss on the cheek and a thank you. From then on, it became a pattern.

  
Post-it notes were a staple at the hospital, so Hiroko nicked a pad of them for home. They took up residence on the counter beside the landline. Takaaki noticed and seemed wary of them immediately - the man had a sixth sense for when his habitat is altered without his knowledge. He always claimed it’s from years of investigative work. Hiroko blamed his neuroticism and suspicion.

  
He warmed up to them once he learns why she brought them home. Stubbornly, neither of them had actually mentioned it to one another, so it took Takaaki running across one of her notes to figure it out.

  
‘Don’t use oven’

  
She’d spilt something on the bottom rack and was trying to soak it off. Just in case, she stuck the little instruction to the handle, knowing Takaaki would notice it.  
When she got home, the note was straightened and the soaking solution had been refreshed. Bravo, Sergeant Ishimaru.

  
From there, the little custom incorporated itself into their lives. It was disgustingly domestic.

  
‘Fridge smelly’ - one or both of them would go through the leftovers in search of the source.

  
‘Don’t eat’ - Takaaki usually kept his hands off her ice cream, but she wasn’t taking any chances with her pint of fudge ripple.

  
‘Boys visiting sunday’ - this one, she’d had to text him to clarify. ‘Boys’ could mean any combination of his son, her son, and their various friends.

  
Once, incredibly passive aggressively, Takaaki had left a tangle of her hair out of the shower drain on top of one of the little notes. In retaliation, she replaced it with one of his stray toenail clippings. They both resolved to deepclean the bathroom that weekend.

  
—

  
Hiroko did manage to surprise Takaaki with the notes again, after a little while. He’d made himself a packed lunch for work the next day before going to bed, and when she came home to raid the fridge after her night shift, she’d seen it. On whatever romantic whim, she doodled a heart and ‘remember to breathe’ on a clean note and folded it up in his chopstick case.

  
If she was a real romantic lead, she would have written it in pink pen and signed it with a kiss. As it was, it was scrawled in sharpie before she went to put her cold feet on Takaaki in their bed. As soon as she wiggled into the blankets next to him and heard him grumble, she forgot about the little love note. 

  
It left her head until she started finding reciprocal ones.

  
It was a pattern of Takaaki’s to allow her to take the lead before he felt like he was ‘allowed’ to do something, particularly in their romantic life. There was something there that spoke to his doomed relationship with his ex-wife, Kiyotaka’s mother, but she wasn’t a psychologist.

  
All of the notes from before that point had been purely practical on each side. However, true to form, after her first little affectionate jotting, more sweet ones started cropping up, getting bolder as time went on.

  
—

  
‘Have a good day’ stuck to the screen of her cellphone, left thoughtfully on the bedside table next to her keys.

  
On her box of cigarettes - ‘brush teeth after please’ - which she knew meant Takaaki wanted a smoke-free kiss.

  
‘You’re stunning’ haphazardly placed on the corner of the bathroom mirror, as if he was doing it before he could lose his nerve.

  
A simple heart scribble tacked up on inside of the front door, so it would be the last thing she saw before her commute.

  
Obviously, this meant fair game for her to fire back.

  
‘Thinking of you’ on a Tupperware holding a cupcake she’d ‘liberated’ from the nurses lounge at work.

  
‘Hello handsome’ on the bathroom mirror next to the ‘you’re stunning’ from him that she’d left up.

  
After a daring break-in on her part - ‘work hard today’ stuck to the steering wheel of his squad car.

  
‘Love you most!’ impulsively attached to the strap of one of his house slippers.

  
She knew when he found the ‘hello, nosy’ sticker in her underwear drawer after he sent a panicked text about putting away laundry.

  
>if you say so ;*  
>I do say so. The drier was full of your delicates.  
>did you fold them?  
>I couldn’t work out how to.  
>so you just felt up my panties? <3  
>You age me.  
>feel me up instead  
>If you’re home before 11.

  
—

  
The notes incorporated into their daily lives so seamlessly that even when their schedules stabilized with one another, the habit survived. Hiroko found him at the bathroom counter, writing something on one of the little sticky notes. He paused when she came in, meeting her eyes in the mirror and seeming to realize he could just tell her whatever he was jotting. But he didn’t move. So, she just reached under his arm and grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste, not speaking either. She sat on the lip of the tub and carried on with her business. Takaaki Ishimaru was reliably a creature of habit, and she knew if she drew too much attention to his eccentricities he’d feel stupid.

  
After a moment of quiet brushing, he slowly looked back down at the note and finished it off. Wordlessly, he capped the pen and turned to her, kissing her forehead and putting the little square of paper face down on her leg before exiting the bathroom. Her grab for his tie to keep him bent down to her was in vain. Too sleepy still to give chase, she kept brushing.

  
Takaaki audibly finished getting ready for work in the bedroom and awkwardly called to her, “See you this evening.” Her mouth was full, so she responded with a garbled but hopefully generally positive noise. It seemed like an acceptable farewell, because she heard him make for the hallway, the front door opening and closing shortly after.

  
Only after she spat and rinsed her mouth did she look at Takaaki’s little missive from that morning. More words than usual were cramped, tiny, onto the slip.  
‘Didn’t want to wake you. Good morning. I love you. Out of eggs. Happy birthday.’  
Something about it was so absurdly funny that she couldn’t help but laugh at her sweet, dense husband.

When he got home 10 hours later, the answering note was on his pillow.  
‘Good evening hun. I love you too. Eggs in fridge. Birthday is tomorrow.’  
His expression made her laugh again, but this time he was there to kiss it off her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> This ends weird and I’m mad about it but I’m tired of having it unfinished  
Sorry to all 3 people who read this ^^;


End file.
